Plastic Surgery is Often Needed After Dog Bites

We all know that dogs can be dangerous. But how dangerous? To answer that question, you can use your eyes, if you are a dog owner, and especially if you own a medium to larger sized dog.

Have you ever given your dog a bone, a bone that, to your touch, seemed solid? You probably wonder how on earth your dog will chew through that bone. Until he does, surprisingly quickly and easily.

That same raw jaw strength and chewing power, is the exact same power that causes injury to people when dogs bite. And if the dog can do that to a bone, imagine what it can do to your skin, tissue and musculature.

Effects of Dog Bites

Dog bites on humans don’t just cause superficial wounds, or cuts or scrapes. Dog bites can mutilate people, and may require not one, but multiple plastic surgeries to reconstruct the area affected by the bite.

That’s aside from the physical therapy that may be needed, when the bite affects bone, ligaments, tendons, or nerves.

There are side, opportunistic injuries as well. Infections are common, as although we can argue whether a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s, it’s still a mouth, and mouths have germs that can easily introduce infection into any wound the bite causes.

Plastic Surgeries are Common

It is estimated that close to 20,000 people in 2022 had plastic surgeries related to dog bites (that’s only the number who had plastic surgery, it doesn’t include other bites that may not have resulted in surgeries). Plastic surgery is so common after a dog bite that there are actually specific protocols and processes that plastic surgeons follow to reconstruct patients injured or mauled by dog bites.

The Risk to Children

Many doctors have stories of people, particularly younger children, who die from dog bites. The closeness in proximity of a child’s head to the dog’s mouth, means that dog bites tend to maul children’s facial features more so than with adults. And when the injuries are to the neck, the bites can be fatal.

Children also tend to experience injuries to hands, when dogs want something the child may be holding—or when the child grabs something from the dog.

And when dogs do grab onto children, children simply are not strong enough to fight back, or to get the dog off of them.

Getting Medical Attention

The quicker you get to a doctor after a bite the better then chances are for a full recovery. We are not qualified to tell whether we need plastic surgery after a bite—only a doctor is. Often, steps can be taken early on, to minimize disfigurement, or to increase the chances of success in surgery—steps that can be missed, if we don’t see a doctor after a dog bite.

If the dog has no owner (such as if it was a stray), shots may also need to be administered to avoid tetanus or rabies. Doctors also advise taking pictures of injuries after they happen, to document the injuries.

Dog bites cause serious injuries. Contact our dog bite and dog injury attorneys to talk about compensation for damage a dog may have caused you. Call the Boston personal injury lawyers at The Law Office of Joseph Linnehan, Jr. today at 617-275-4200 for help.

Source:

plasticsurgery.org/news/articles/best-practices-to-heal-dog-bites#:~:text=The%202022%20ASPS%20Procedural%20Statistics,it’s%20individual%20history%20and%20behavior.